printed circuit board Last modified: Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Sometimes abbreviated PCB, a thin plate on which chips and other electronic components are placed. Computers consist of one or more boards, often called cards or adapters. Circuit boards fall into the following categories: motherboard : The principal board that has connectors for attaching devices to the bus. Typically, the mother board contains the CPU, memory, and basic controllers for the system. On PCs, the motherboard is often called the system board or mainboard. expansion board : Any board that plugs into one of the computer's expansion slots. Expansion boards include controller boards, LAN cards, and video adapters. Daughtercard : Any board that attaches directly to another board. controller board: A special type of expansion board that contains a controller for a peripheral device. When you attach new devices, such as a disk drive or graphics monitor, to a computer, you often need to add a controller board. Network Interface Card (NIC) : An expansion board that enables a PC to be connected to a local-area network (LAN). video adapter: An expansion board that contains a controller for a graphics monitor. Printed circuit boards are also called cards.
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